SIMON NEWCOMB 377 



elapsed time had with slight accretions amounted to sufficient to 

 vitiate in a marked degree the records of astronomy. The compila- 

 tion necessary to correct this error required years to perform, and 

 although the corrections were promptly applied to work in prog- 

 ress it was not until 1878 that he was able to publish his Reduc- 

 tions and Discussion of the Moon before 1750. 



Later when release came to him from official duties he returned 

 to that subject and with the aid of a grant from the Carnegie 

 Institution given him in 1903 and later, he devoted his leisure to a 

 further investigation of this subject, culminating in a memoir on 

 The Motion of the Moon, the final words of which were dictated 

 by him after he had been stricken with the fatal illness that 

 stretched him upon a bed of suffering and from which he never 

 arose. 



The sun and the moon and the planets yielded their secrets to 

 the call of his mighty intellect, and science has profited to the 

 benefit of humanity in consequence of the life of Simon Newcomb. 



As Newcomb grew in reputation his advice was sought for 

 many purposes, and his knowledge taken advantage of not only 

 by our government but also by those abroad. Of these experi- 

 ences, therefore, brief mention must be made. 



In 1869 he was one of the party sent to Des Moines, Iowa, to 

 observe the solar eclipse that passed across the United States in 

 that year. He prepared the detailed set of instructions issued by 

 the Naval Observatory to observers in towns at each edge of the 

 shadow-path to note the short duration of totality. He was also 

 a member of the party sent to Gibraltar to observe the eclipse that 

 occurred in December, 1870. The day of the eclipse was cloudy 

 so that the observations made were not of very great value. He 

 made the trip from England to Gibraltar as the guest of the Eng- 

 lish official party, and among other guests was Prof. John Tyndall. 



Of this period he wrote: "My continued presence on the observ- 

 atory staff led to my taking part in two of the great movements 

 of the next ten years, the construction and inauguration of the 

 great telescope and the observations of the transit of Venus." 



Concerning the first of these events Newcomb has told pleas- 



